The opening on Monday evening of the group exhibition my work is in, Commensalis in Bath, was fab, really busy, great fun and loads of happy people who enjoyed the art. I stayed over to invigilate the next day and also to do a short residency; I set up a tabletop easel and did drawings of the interior throughout the day. I don’t normally draw buildings and I find it hard not to make them look like architectural drawings, so I tried to focus on atmosphere rather than detail. It’s a fascinating building, sparse and a bit Gothic, a mortuary chapel surrounded by very old graves. I did the drawing onto an A3 canvas sheet, prepared with a yellow ochre oil wash, using dip pens and Indian ink, black and white conte crayons and wet wipes (yes, the things you wipe babies bottoms with) to get a wash effect.

Here are a few pictures of the opening featuring my ‘Art Here’ banner and the marvellous ‘Lady Margaret’, of The Natural Theatre Company, who kindly and graciously opened the exhibition, aided by the ‘Wind-up Merchant‘ Nick Steele with his antique HMV Gramophones and DeeJay set of vintage 78 vinyl platters.

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The show is still on until Sunday, 12.00 to 18.00 daily, so if you fancy a day trip to Beautiful Bath, pop in and see the exhibition in Walcot Chapel. And on Sunday, between 3 and 4pm there’s Tea With The Artists – lashings of tea, scones and Victoria Sandwich…….

Just got back from 2 days in Bath, setting up, opening and invigilating our group exhibition, Commensalis. It’s in a very old mortuary chapel, set in a sloping graveyard. We set up pretty quickly and Husb and I drifted off into the graveyard to have a rest. Here he is, sunbathing. Can you believe it?! Sunbathing. In a British Summer. It must be the end of days 😉

Tomorrow I’ll post some pictures of the opening, but now I’m off to bed…..

I’m part of an artist collective called Commensalis that aims to organise pop-up exhibitions in quirky places to get our work seen by a good cross-section of people, not only dedicated artanistas. We’ve found a geat mortuary chapel in Bath, UK and we’re busy raising some money through crowd-funding to cover the costs of putting on an artshow as we don’t get any public funding.

It’s the first time we’ve tried this and it’s certainly a learning experience. It works by inviting people to become sponsors and in return they can choose a ‘reward’. We’re 3 weeks in and we’ve raised just over 40% of our target, which is really good, but it’s slowed down a bit over the past few days so we’re taking some of the rewards off the site and putting new ones up.

These are some tiny drawings I did a while back just after Woolworth’s Stores closed. I used to sit in Waterstones cafe opposite our local Woollies and sketch pigeons that quickly colonised the lettering on the building’s facade. Once the store had closed permanently, the signage was no longer illuminated so it was cool enough for the pigeons to sit on. They fidget all the time so it wasn’t easy to draw them!

They’re original drawings in pen onto Cotman watercolour paper, mounted onto Fabriano that I coloured randomly with a metallic acrylic medium. The overall size is approximately 15 cms square and they’re ready for framing. They’re available as rewards from our Commensalis crowdfunding site if you fancy giving one of the little fellows a home 🙂